Passion Islam I November 2009 SPECIAL FEATURE I 23
economics. The mode of production which they do not get. The labourer Under capitalism the bourgeoisie
A Comparative
of the material means of existence is made to work more hours than in would go on accumulating the surplus
conditions the whole process of necessary for his own subsistence profit out of the unpaid labour of the
social, political and intellectual life. and the surplus value thus created is workers and the worker would go
Social changes, political revolutions annexed by the employer. on getting wages which would be
and religious reformations are not The creation and grabbing of exhausted in their own reproduction.
due to any increasing insight into surplus value is inevitable under the Marx makes no distinction between
eternal truth and justice; they must be capitalistic system. To Marx, it is the the incomes of the moneylender, the
Study of
sought in the economics of the epoch heart and soul of that system. While landowner, the capitalist, the employer
concerned. In a joint work on German during earlier historical stages of and the merchant. He thinks there
Ideology, Marx and Engels sum it up capitalism he exercised personal are no essential differences in their
as follow: initiative in the organisation of interests or their positions within the
“In direct contrast to German production, he continued, even at bourgeoisie. Their incomes consist of
philosophy which descends from the mature stages of capitalism, to portions of surplus value produced by
heaven to earth, here the ascent is hire others to do the directing, while labour.
made from earth to heaven. That is to he retained the passive role of the The lower strata of the bourgeoisie,
say, we do not start from what men immediate supplier of funds to pay the small tradespeople, shopkeepers,
say, imagine, conceive, nor from men labour. A capitalist has no other aim handicraftsmen and the peasants
as described, thought of, imagined but the acquisition of surplus value. would gradually sink into the proletariat
and conceived, in order thence and All surplus value, whether profit, because they will be swamped in
thereby to reach corporeal men; interest or rent, is in substance the competition with the big capitalists.
we start from real active men and materialisation of unpaid labour. Bourgeoisie has played a very
from their life-process, also show After the process of capital important, progressive and transitional
the development of the ideological accumulation is set going, it is the role; it has played a revolutionary part
reflexes and echoes of this life- labourer’s own labour robbed from in tearing asunder all feudal ties and
Ideologies
process also show the development him which is advanced to the labourer retaining naked self-interest as the only
of the ideological reflexes and echoes to create further surplus value for nexus between man and man. It has
of this life-process.” the capitalist employer. The produce drowned in the icy water of egoistical
The operation of non-economic of the labour of those who do work, calculation all religious fervour and
forces is not denied but, as Engels gets unavoidably accumulated in idealistic sentimentalism. Only direct
says, according to the materialistic the hands of those who do not work, brutal exploitation is left. Its positive
conception of history, the production and becomes in their hands the most achievement is the advancement of
and reproduction of real life constitutes powerful means to enslave the very humanity in many directions without
in the last instance the determining men who produced it. This process any deliberate humanitarian motive.
factor of history. is inherent in the entire capitalistic Nature’s forces have been subjected
The entire value of a commodity system. to applied science and various parts
consists of physical or mental Being contrary to human welfare of the world have been brought into
labour embodied in its production. and internally inconsistent, it must be close contact.
A commodity has a value because scrapped and superseded. Economic But, in accordance with the
it is a crystallisation of social labour. forces have always created mutually inevitable dialectic of materialism, it
The relative values of commodities antagonistic classes of the oppressors has set in operation forces that will
are determined by the respective and the oppressed. cause its ultimate downfall. It has
quantities or amounts of labour “The modern bourgeois society, created the proletariat as its logical
worked up, realised, fixed in them. But that has sprouted from the ruins of correlative. The proletarian is defined
it is only socially valuable labour that feudal society, has not done away “as a class of labourers who live
is value-determining. with class-antagonisms. It has only so long as they find work, and
Marx conceived of all kinds and but established new classes, new they work so long as their labour
degrees of occupational skill as being conditions of oppression, new forms increases capital. These labourers,
reducible to standard time units of of struggles in place of the old ones.” who sell themselves piecemeal, are
unskilled labour. The value of quality Society has not split up into two a commodity like every other article
can be judged only by reducing it to great hostile camps, into two great of commerce, and are consequently
quantity of unskilled labour. Wages classes directly facing each other --- exposed to all the vicissitudes of
are on the whole bound closely to a bourgeoisie and proletariat. competition and to all the fluctuations
physical subsistence level. “A sense of this irreconcilable clash of the market.”
Marx maintained that under of interests must be instilled into the As industrial processes herd
capitalism the working day must be workers. With their class-antagonisms together large masses of workers in
longer than the number of hours of developed, class-struggle would one town, the proletariat is in a much
average labour required to produce ensue; and this, necessarily taking a better position to form combinations
the workers subsistence. The value political form, would be the first step against the bourgeois and can club
produced during these excess hours in preparation for the overthrow of together in order to keep up the rate
constitutes “surplus value,” that is, capitalism and the establishment of a of wages. The proletariat is also
values produced by the workers but new order.” benefited by increased means of
We gratefully acknowledge and thank the Institute of Islamic Culture for permission to reproduce Chapter 13 from his book “ Ideology of Islam “ by Khalifa Abdul Hakim.
Continued next month
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